New music UnCOVered – Honey Lung

London-based alternative rock outfit Honey Lung have had quite the 2016, with the release of their debut EP ‘Kind of Alone’ sparking the interests of Radio 1’s Huw Stephens among others. The four piece seamlessly blend grunge influenced indie with mesmerising jazz guitars with sprinkles of shoegaze, together with emotionally charged lyrics to create an impassioned pandemonium.

Before their first headline London show at The Social, a venue situated in the beating heart of the capital just off Oxford Street. We caught up with Honey Lung at in the back of a pick-up truck as we watched the revellers pour in and fill the venue to the brim.

Honey Lung released their debut ‘Kind of Alone’ EP in November, combining influences from Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine with Yuck and War on Drugs.

They have performed a live session for John Kennedy’s Xposure on Radio X, and Huw Stephens has just tipped them as one of the acts he’s excited about for January 2017.

It’s your first headline gig of the year are you excited for tonight?

Jamie: Yeah, very excited, if people turn up!

Kirsten: This is our first London show with me in it, so yeah, it’s going to be like Booyah!

Kirsten, I believe you just joined the band recently to fill in on bass, how did this come about?

Charlie: She asked the band if she could join and we said yes!

Kirsten: I was at a gig with my old band at The Good Ship and we played a really bad show, I don’t know what it was, and he hit me up and he was like; ‘Dude you were really cool! We’re looking for a bassist!’. I was like yeah, actually I could probably be your bassist yeah that was It, thanks to The Good Ship!

Jamie: Charlie wanted to play guitar so it was perfect timing as well!

Where did the name Honey Lung come from, it’s quite sweet, but also rather morbid in the same sense?

Jamie: There’s no real story behind it, I came up with the word Honey and Omri came up with ‘lung’ to be honest, we thought it just had a ring to it. I like the idea of, I don’t know, I think Honey is quite a nice word and there a lot of song names with the word Honey in it that I like. ‘Just Like Honey’ by The Jesus and Mary Chain and ‘Honey’ by Swim Deep, I just like the descriptiveness of it really.

You realised your EP ‘Kind of Alone’ in November what’s the reception been like?

It’s been good I think, all of our friends enjoy it and we’ve had a fair few people who’ve found us through the grapevine you know through social media, Bandcamp and stuff. It’s been good, I think we’ve had a fairly good reception. Having some music on the internet helps gets gigs and contact as well.We’ve had some airtime on Radio X and BBC1, BBC introducing.

You played a live set on Radio X, how was that whole experience for you?

It was great, really exciting, it was really nerve-racking sitting in the lobby like OH MY GOODNESS we’re going on air to like one hundred thousand people so we were like f**k! Plus I had tonsillitis like three days before we recorded it so my voice was like completely f****d singing wise for the session.

In your EP there’s a lot of sounds that arch back to the mid-nineties, very grungy sounds, sprinkle of shoegaze in there. People have drawn compressions to the likes of Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine. Could you perhaps talk us through the creative process behind your work?

So I guess the songs take a tonne of influence from bands from the nineties, Pavement, Built to Spill and Smashing Pumpkins of course. We also have a lot of dream pop, shoegaze influences as well, bands such as Chapter House, My Bloody Valentine.
I feel like we are keeping with that but also we’re building upon that and developing that and I guess we have this kind of Low-Fi sound. There’s a whole Low-Fi scene going on in Philadelphia and we’re kind of tapping into that a bit, bands like Alex G and Elvis Depressedly and stuff like that, which is all good!

What are Honey Lung’s ambitions going forward in 2017?

Charlie: Well, we’re recording a single next week, yeah so we want to record more singles, tour.

Jamie: Yeah, just record more music, tour, yeah that’s pretty much it really Get our names our there to more people, reach a wider audience, we’ve been playing a load of London shows and we want to branch out to Manchester, Liverpool and hopefully play a few festivals. Yeah, just generally just keep doing what we’re doing
Are there any plans in the woodwork for a UK Tour at all?

Yeah, first of all, we need to get a van, John our manager is going to get a van soon and I think the plans are Summer, late Spring maybe even Autumn. There’s some hush-hush stuff going on that we can’t really talk about and it all sort of depends if that comes through to an extent and you know if things work out we’ll definitely be doing tours.

Finally, why should someone sit down and listen to Honey Lung?

Charlie: We’ll tell you how to live your life! No, I’m joking! I think it’s because we reach out to a lot of people our age who are kind of bored of the same old landfill indie that they’ve been hearing since 2007 / 2008. We just want to do something interesting, something kind of different, we don’t want to be playing four-chord kind of pop.
I mean we kind of have tonnes of poppy aspects but we kind fo spin it on its head, we’re trying to do something new essentially something progressive. Something that other people can dance and mosh to, but at the same time still hear an extra verse or an extra part to a chorus and they’re like ‘Oh wasn’t expecting that!’ and hopefully they like it.